After flunking running-mate test, Rick Scott gets a do-over

@MarcACaputo

A first major test of how a candidate might govern: choosing a running mate.

Rick Scott flunked that one.

On Tuesday, just seven days into Scott’s third regular legislative session, Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll resigned amid a racketeering investigation of Allied Veterans of the World, an Internet gambling operation that masqueraded as a charity .

“I have no knowledge that she broke the law,” Scott told reporters the next day.

For a candidate who campaigned to clean up Tallahassee and fight special interests, that’s a tough line to deliver.

Now he gets a do-over pick, a campaign-trail make-up exam.

Republican advisers would love a Hispanic female — two coveted demographics — preferably one involved in education. Two names from Miami, state Sen. Anitere Flores and Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado, fit the bill. So do others.

But regardless of whom Scott chooses, the Carroll bombshell does nothing to help the governor and his flatlined poll numbers heading into his 2014 reelection campaign.

Unlike some of Scott’s other mistakes, this was probably less an unforced error than bad luck.

Still, it’s another reminder of how Scott talked tough about ethics only to do little about it when he got into office. The candidate who warned about “Tallahassee insiders” in the 2010 GOP primary turned around and picked one in Carroll, then a Republican House member.

Carroll’s public-relations firm represented Allied Veterans while she served in the Florida House. She even cut an ad for the group in 2010. And Carroll’s office filed legislation, quickly withdrawn, that would have benefited Internet cafes.

“It was withdrawn days later at the urging of party leaders who were concerned Carroll had an obvious conflict of interest,” The Florida Times-Union, Carroll’s hometown paper in Jacksonville, wrote in May 2010, months before Scott picked her.

On Tuesday, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement interviewed Carroll in the criminal case against Allied, which has netted 57 arrests so far and involves the federal and state governments from Florida to Oklahoma. The FDLE said Allied used Internet cafes to net about $300 million in revenue.

Hours after the FDLE interview, Scott’s general counsel and chief of staff spoke privately with Carroll for about 45 minutes. She then signed the 30-word resignation letter that they helped draft for her.